Isabel McLaughlin

Whitefish Falls in 1936. Top row: Randolph Hewton, Mr. Whittall, Charles Comfort, Yvonne McKague Housser. Middle row: Isabel McLaughlin, Gordon Webber, Bennie Hewton. Bottom row: Hal Hayden, Audrey Taylor, Prudence Heward, Rody Kenny Courtice, Mr. Macdonald.

Born in Oshawa, Ontario, McLaughlin was the third of five daughters to the founder of General Motors of Canada, President Col. Robert Samuel McLaughlin and Adelaide Mowbray McLaughlin. She studied art at the Ontario College of Art between 1925 and 1927 with Group of Seven member Arthur Lismer and Yvonne McKague Housser, the latter of whom she referred to as "remarkable".[2]^: 12 She then attended the Art Students' League, as it was called, a school started by Lismer`s students on the grounds of the College of Art with, as mentors, Lismer and Housser.[3] Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Bertram Brooker, Lowrie Warrener, Frances Loring and Florence Wyle, came and besides advice, expressed enthusiasm.[4] In 1929, she studied in Paris at the Scandinavian Academy with Prudence Heward, then in Vienna with Housser in 1930.

McLaughlin was recognized as a talented artist from early in her career. She was an invited participant in the Group of Seven exhibition in 1931.[5] She became lifelong friends with Housser and the two often went on painting excursions together and exhibited their work at Canadian Group of Painters shows, of which both were founding members in 1933. Tree by McLaughlin, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada, was lampooned in the Toronto Telegram following its exhibition in a 1936 Canadian Group of Painters show. During the summers from 1947 to 1952, McLaughlin studied with Hans Hofmann accompanied by Alexandra Luke with whom she also was a close friend.[1][6]

McLaughlin`s works are in many public collections such as the National Gallery of Canada,[7] the Robert McLaughlin Gallery[8] in Oshawa and the Art Gallery of Guelph,[9] Ontario. She served as its first woman president of the Canadian Group of Painters in 1939.[10] McLaughlin was also a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, as well as an executive member of the Heliconian Club in Toronto.[11] She was the recipient of the Order of Ontario in 1993 and the Order of Canada in 1997.[12]

In 1987, McLaughlin made a donation of art work from her personal collection of art works by other artists than herself to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa. Some of these artists included Gerhard Richter, Prudence Heward, Louis Archambault, B. C. Binning, André Charles Biéler, Emil Bisttram, Emily Carr, Paraskeva Clark, Lyonel Feininger, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Alexandra Luke, Peter Haworth, Bobs Cogill Haworth, Hans Hofmann, J. E. H. MacDonald, Anne Savage, Arthur Lismer, and Sarah Robertson among others.[13] A second donation followed in 1990 which included many works by Jackson, Lismer and Housser.[14]

In 1948, Housser painted a watercolour depicting McLaughlin titled Isabel the Archaeologist, Cap Chat River.[2]^: 69 She also was the subject of an authorized portrait relief sculpture by Florence Wyle.[15] A mid-life portrait photograph was authorized by Reva Brooks in the 1950s.

In 2016, the Art Gallery of Guelph included her work in the exhibition Dear Life, which traced the ways in which women have shaped the course of art across the 20th, and now 21st, centuries.[9]

Before her death, she gave her archives to Queen's University archives.[16][17] Following her death, McLaughlin's remaining collection of art work was donated to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery. Isabel McLaughlin (1903–2002): Painter, Patron, Philanthropist was held at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston, Ontario, in 2007, to celebrate the gift to the Queen`s University at Kingston archives.